Combating nuclear terrorism in the age of nuclear renaissance: domestic implementation of international legal obligations in India

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has emerged as one of the topmost challenges of the 21st century. Because the threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism is of recent origin, the international nuclear regime built over the past half-century was considered quite inadequate to address these concerns. This prompted the international community to respond to this global security problem by creating new legal rules at the national level and to strengthen the existing instruments and institutions. It is in this context that this paper introduces and analyses the legal framework established by multilateral instruments and United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1540 against the backdrop of global nuclear renaissance. The aim of the paper is to examine and analyse the national implementation of the international legal obligations in the field of nuclear terrorism in India, a key player in the international nuclear debate.